The present invention relates to a green tire supplying apparatus and more particularly to a green tire supplying apparatus for loading a vulcanizing press or a green tire receiving stand disposed at a predetermined position located in front of the vulcanizing press, with a green tire to be vulcanized which is unloaded from a green tire carrying wagon.
To assure that green tires are successively valcanized in a vulcanizing press by supplying them therein automatically, most hitherto known vulcanizing presses were provided with a green tire receiving stand adapted to receive a green tire to be vulcanized next. The green tire receiving stand was located outside the vulcanizing press at a position in front of the press.
Therefore, all operations could be automatically carried out from the step of storing green tires until the step of vulcanizing them, when green tires prepared in the preceding assembling and molding process were automatically delivered from a storage room or the like in conformance with signals issued from a plurality of vulcanizing presses, so that they were unloaded on each of the green tire receiving stands disposed in front of the vulcanizing presses.
To facilitate understanding of the present invention, a conventional tire supplying apparatus will be briefly described with reference to FIG. 1.
As schematically illustrated in FIG. 1, a plurality of vulcanizing presses A are provided with green tire receiving stands B each of which is located at a predetermined position located in front of the related vulcanizing press, and a self-propelled green tire carrying wagon D moves in parallel to the array of vulcanizing presses while it is guided by means of a conductor C embedded in the floor. Green tires on the carrying wagon are unloaded on the green tire receiving stands B when it comes to a stop in front of the latter. Operations have already been automated up to the step of unloading the green tires into the green tire receiving stands. Since unloading operation for transferring green tires E from the carrying wagon D onto the green tire receiving stands B was manually carried out, one or two operators were needed by an array of vulcanizing presses for the unloading operation, although operation of the vulcanizing press was fully automated.
A few reasons why the unloading operation for green tires to be vulcanized has not been automated will be noted below. (1) Since the green tire carrying wagon D is stopped at a predetermined position only at reduced positional accuracy, it is impossible to correctly unload a green tire onto the green tire receiving stand B. (2) It is important that each of the green tire receiving stands B be located exactly relative to the center of the corresponding vulcanizing press A. In some manufacturing lines a plurality of vulcanizing presses A manufactured by different manufacturers are arranged and thereby green tire receiving stands B are disposed in a line with much difficulty. Provided that a single manufacturing line is constituted by a plurality of the same type of vulcanizing presses manufactured by the same manufacturer, it is practically difficult for the center of each of the vulcanizing presses A to be correctly located on a straight line. Thus, in practice the center of each of the vulcanizing presses is appreciably offset therefrom and thereby the position of the corresponding green tire receiving stand B is dislocated from its own specified position by an appreciable distance.